


And Other Addictions

by Jenwryn



Category: Death Note
Genre: Community: Sweet Charity, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Wammy's Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-21
Updated: 2010-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-03 13:17:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And maybe Matt was wrong, maybe there is no such thing as <em>can't get better</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue/Epilogue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/gifts).



> A long, long time ago, Misura won me at Sweet Charity, with the idea that I'd be writing her something around 2500 words long (with the prompt "death by chocolate"). I took forever to get it finished and, somehow, this was the end result. ^^
> 
> Anyways, this hugs close to canon, but only for so long as it suits me. It's also nothing more than a blazing dose of fanservice. Really. Fanservice is what we do. ;)

_I'll be the phonograph that plays your favourite   
Albums back as you're lying there drifting off to sleep._

~ The Postal Service, 'Brand New Colony'.

**►**

11:23 PM and the rain sets in, clattering on the shutters and bang-rattling against the front door. Matt pulls his sleeves further down his wrists, his collar higher up around his neck, and presses his back in closer to the muddle of scruffy blankets, and clean laundry, which one of them must have tossed across the sofa at some point. It's supposed to be spring soon, but you wouldn't know it, not when the weather is curling in, cooler and harder, against the flimsy walls of their cheap apartment. _Santa Rosa_, the girl at the supermarket had named the storm, when Matt had made his way down there earlier in the evening, his hands clothed in gloves and buried deep in his pockets. Now he wonders whether the front door will actually survive it, as the storm beats rougher.

11:42 PM and Mello steps through that same doorway, the wind tearing it from his grasp and making him wrangle with the handle, cussing like a dockworker. Matt doesn't even look up, simply starts shutting down the programme he's been working on for the last few hours. Shopping bags slump onto the floor behind him. He can hear Mello's jacket shedding water, _drip-drip-splatch_, onto the scuffed linoleum. No doubt it's running down the hairline cracks that lace the floor, and probably pooling against Matt's Italian racing boots, just because that's how the world tends to work. There's a familiar grunting noise, as Mello unlaces his own boots and shimmies free of them, then another soft cuss, and the rattle of his heavy leather coat being flung over the weak-willed umbrella stand, left behind by the previous tenant. The whole process is nothing more than an interlude, though, and then Mello is hanging over Matt's shoulder, his skin warm and his hair cold, dripping rainwater onto Matt's neck. The water slides down beneath Matt's collar and onto his chest.

"Oi," says Matt protestingly. "That's friggin' cold, Mels."

"Funny, I think I already knew that," Mello purrs against Matt's earlobe and, if the water hadn't already had Matt shivering, then the vibrations of Mello's storm-chilled voice would have done the trick quite nicely. The blond nips at Matt's ear, just enough pressure to make Matt squirm, but not enough to actually hurt. He adds, "You know, _somebody_ refused to go out on a chocolate run, despite me having asked nicely. I had to take a detour in this cat-piss weather, because of that."

Matt leans his head backwards, rolling his eyes in the general direction of his best friend's God. "There's something a little bit wrong with your definition of _asking nicely_, Mello," he says. "I really don't think that ringing me up in the middle of me trying to get a shitload of complicated work done – complicated work done for _you_, I might add – and whinging like a naggy old woman actually constitutes as _nicely_."

The word _work_ temporarily distracts the blond and he leans over a little further, to better study the screen of Matt's laptop. Matt also casts his own gaze in that direction, but only to check that the programme has completely shut itself down safely. It has, so he closes the laptop with a decisive _click_ of the cover locking into place, and puts it securely, out of the way of Mello and his compulsive need to touch things, onto the cluttered coffee table.

"I was looking at that," Mello complains.

Matt latches onto a fistful of the blond's dripping hair and says smoothly, "Sure you were, but you and I both know that you reading most of my work is akin to me reading your Latin Bible, man – pretty much pointless. Now, do you want to get your pretty little arse around here and have me dry you off, or would you rather stand there bellyaching about my alleged lack of niceness?"

For a second Mello actually hesitates, to Matt's great amusement. After a red blink or two of the clock on the microwave, though, the blond grins slowly and disentangles his hair from Matt's grasp. He makes his way around the sofa like that, then, all rain-heavy black jeans and drenched hair, his hips doing that thing that they do when Mello is in a particularly predatory mood, and moves to sit himself down on Matt's lap.

Matt, who's been letting his eyes wander appreciatively, bursts out laughing. "Whoa there, not soaked through you don't." He pushes Mello back a little way and then, before the blond can start his drama, tosses him a towel pulled from amongst the tumbled stack of laundry. Mello catches it easily, though his eyes are warning lights. Matt pulls another towel free and holds it up with one hand and a meaningful expression. He reels the blond back in towards him with a thumb hooked at a silver belt buckle.

A cranky pout turns into an expectant smirk, as Mello begins to dry his hair, and Matt begins to unloop the belt free from Mello's jeans.


	2. Chapter 2

It's Matt, who begins it all. Not on purpose, either. It's just... well, it's just been a long week, pop quizzes to answer and essays to write, and the weather outside is still miserable, not that Matt cares about that exactly, except that the greyness seems to creep inside too, somehow, as though the very walls at Wammy's can soak up the cold and spit it out into the bedroom that the two of them share. Yes, it's been a long week, and Mello, who is loud-mouthed and whiny, is refusing to shut up about Lent and the doom that is him having already been so long without chocolate. Matt is used to Mello's moods but, really, there's a limit to everything. And so Matt is simply cranky, when he pulls the block of Lindt from amongst the electrical wires, dead batteries and old socks in the top drawer of his desk – a very small block of chocolate, for the record, which he had nicked from Mello the _last_ time the blond pissed had Matt off beyond his breaking point.

If Matt could somehow glance into the future and see where it would lead, well, maybe he wouldn't do it; maybe he would put the chocolate back, or throw it at Mello's head, or storm out of the room and give it to the first person he comes across, out of spite. Matt can't see into the future, though, and so he doesn't do any of those things at all. Instead, he pulls delicately, tauntingly, at the wrapper; breaks a corner of chocolate off with his front teeth, and slides it onto his tongue, to let it melt there. Matt doesn't even really like chocolate, at least not to obsessive levels – he'd rather chips and gravy, thanks – but the expression on Mello's face is worth the effort.

The blond bunches his fists at his sides and looks ready to pounce. He goes a funny shade, when Matt curls his tongue to break more of the fine, thin chocolate free from the bar, and swirls it behind his teeth.

"Mmm," says Matt with deliberate exaggeration, just because he can; just because he knows it will drive Mello up the wall to think that someone else is enjoying that which he, himself, cannot have. Matt's trying hard not to laugh his arse off (_death by chocolate_ is not up there on his lists of Preferred Ways To Go), and maybe that's his downfall, actually, because he's no longer paying full attention to Mello, and _that_ is always an extremely unwise move when in the midst of pushing Mello's buttons.

"I can't eat it," says Mello in a growly, pissed off voice. Matt's about to shoot back something smart-arse, when the boy adds, "but there's no rule says I can't _kiss_ it."

Matt's eyes have barely had time to widen, and he's choking on the chocolate in his need to work out whether Mello is joking – Mello had better be bloody joking – when the blond is right there, way too close for comfort. Mello's eyes are bright and blue and, yeah, definitely more than a little bit furious, and then Mello is _kissing him_. It's crooked and it's clumsy, and Mello pushes his tongue between Matt's dumbfounded lips and licks at Matt's mouth. Matt powers backwards, with a scrabbling jerk of stripy-socked feet against the debris of books and disembowelled gadgets that litter the carpet of his side of the room, and finds his lower back trapped against the desk. Mello just takes Matt's retreat as an invitation to shove him harder against the furniture. The desk rattles against the wall. Mello has his mouth on Matt's again, and he does something with his tongue that ought to feel really gross but somehow doesn't; Matt really hopes he didn't actually make the embarrassing noise that he thinks he just made. He can feel his knees giving out as Mello's hair brushes against his face. And Mello simply pushes closer, as though he knows Matt kind of wants to slide to the floor in a messy heap, but doesn't want to let him.

Matt's body is doing things it shouldn't, and it's hard to think through the panic. He finally remembers that he has hands of his own, and puts them on Mello's shoulders to shove him the hell away – but it's too late, oh man, it's too late, too bloody late, and he can tell from the way Mello gasps into his mouth, all warm breath and chocolate, that Mello _knows_. That Mello has felt it. That Mello has felt it, through the material of both of their trousers. Matt's face goes as red as a postbox, the problem wilting away from the sheer horror of it having been detected. Mello lurches backwards, wide-eyed and startled, a rare expression on his face professing genuine shock at something happening that he hadn't expected; something that he hadn't calculated into the on-the-spot contingency plans that follow him around like his own shadow.

Matt wraps an arm around himself and hugs tightly, his other hand holding onto the desk because his legs are still shaky. Every square inch of his not-inconsiderable brain is rushing to try and find some way to explain it all away, some way to prove that he's not queer or whatever – some way to make Mello not hate him now.

Matt hasn't even worked out how to make his jaw function, though, when Mello's expression changes. The blond's mouth forms a small _oh_ and then he lurches forwards again, maybe even faster than he had moved away, his teeth clicking against Matt's teeth and his tongue back in Matt's mouth, as if there were still chocolate to taste, except that Matt knows there isn't. Matt clutches helplessly at the desk, but his lips are moving against Mello's, as if Matt weren't telling them _not_ to, and Mello has both of his hands scrunched up against the front of Matt's shirt, and it's nice, it's... it's really damn nice, so long as Matt doesn't think, and thinking isn't exactly working very well at the moment anyway, and maybe Matt's hands are even moving to take hold of Mello's waist and pull him closer. But then Mello makes this kind of hushed moaning noise, a noise that shoots like lightning down Matt's body, and suddenly it is there between them again. Matt kind of wants to hide from embarrassment, and maybe Mello can simply ignore it, except that Mello never ignores anything, and he gasps into Matt's mouth again, and one of his hands streaks down the front of Matt's body, as though he's going to—

Matt yelps and struggles free, sheer panic lending him the strength to send Mello tumbling onto his arse on the floor, and he's out of the door and half way down the hall before he can even _begin_ to process the sheer mortification of what just happened.


	3. Chapter 3

Matt doesn't meet Mello's eyes for almost a week.

On the thirty-first of March, Lent ends, and Mello swaggers into their room holding a block of Cadbury's high and triumphant. He waves the purple-wrapped prize under Matt's nose as he swans past, then settles himself down at the desk on his side of the room. He unwraps the block on the top of his chemistry textbook, licking at his thumb and dabbing up the chocolatey shards that fall onto the crisp pages.

Matt tries not to watch him, but it's a pretty futile goal. He has actually realized, this past week, in the course of attempting to _not_ think about Mello, just how much time he generally _does_ spend with his mind or his eyes fixed upon the blond. And not... not always in a best friend kind of way, either. Matt is aware of that now, and it's kind of weird, and it's kind of obvious, and he doesn't know what he's supposed to _do_ with the knowledge since he's obtained it. Apart from lock it away in some distant part of his brain, of course, and just hope that it sort of... dies off.

The small fact that Mello clearly loves it, when Matt is playing the part of his willing and attentive audience, doesn't exactly help matters, either.

"You can have some, you know, if you want," Mello says casually now, holding out a square of chocolate between his thumb and his index finger, as though it were perfectly normal for him to be giving his chocolate away.

Matt stares, and asks if he's running a fever. Which may not have been the best response, really, because, the next thing he knows, Mello is looking pissed off again and is throwing scrunched up Russian notes at Matt's head. Matt laughs and dodges, holding his pillow like a shield and reaching for the nearest throwable item to pelt back in return.

...on second thoughts, it had been the perfect response.

Still. Matt has to be cautious now, and he knows it. He can't risk being cornered, not now he knows that the wrong kind of glance is going to make him blush like a dumb girl or, worse, spring a boner against Mello's body. In fact, he's pretty sure he can't so much as _think_ the words 'boner' and 'Mello' in the same sentence ever again.

At least, not until the lights have gone out and, after a while, Mello's bed begins to rustle and squeak. Matt knows his friend gave _that_ up over Lent too, not that Mello told him, exactly; they do share a room, after all. Somehow it affects Matt more than it used to, though, and somehow he doesn't seem able to tune out or fall asleep, and somehow he doesn't seem capable of denying that it makes his insides heat up and bubble.

And if Matt waits until Mello's breathing has smoothed into sleep, and then turns his face to the wall and slides his hand into his own pyjamas, well, Matt doesn't want to discuss it. Not even with himself.

**►**

On the ninth of April, Matt lets Mello lean against him when they're sitting on the floor, working on a combined project for the geography class they share. Matt pretends not to notice when Mello's fingers stray off-course, from the pages they're supposed to be turning, and draw invisible continents against Matt's jeans-covered knee instead.

On the fourteenth, Matt leans over Mello's desk to reach for some papers, and finds himself standing there like an imbecile, sniffing curiously at the scent of Mello's hair. He darts back as if he's been burnt, the second he realizes what he's doing; even as he's pulling back, though, he sees the way that Mello shivers to himself, as if he knows exactly what Matt had been doing. As if he doesn't find it weird.

On the nineteenth, Mello slinks up behind Matt, stands there for a good long moment, then puts his arms around Matt's waist and his face against Matt's back. Matt can hear Mello breathe, can feel the light press of Mello's chin.

Matt counts to ten before he wriggles free.

Two hours, seven minutes, and a handful of seconds later, he turns over on his bed and demands, "Doesn't it even bother you?"

Mello puts down _Faust_, and plays dumb.

Matt glares. "Me. Being a guy. Like this."

Mello scrunches up his eyebrows and heaves a dramatic belly-sigh. "Oh, obviously I think it's _terrible_."

Matt rolls his eyes, then covers them with his goggles.

Mello makes as if he's going to sit up, and Matt can't help but twitch. Maybe the blond notices, because he sighs again, a little less drama-queen and a little more genuinely this time, and decides against moving. "I don't see that it really matters either way," he mutters.

Matt pushes his face against his pillow, so that his goggles almost hurt around his eyes. Then he lifts his head, just high enough to see Mello, and asks, against his better judgement, "You... don't?"

Mello is looking distinctly peeved. "Do we really have to talk about it?" he snaps, suddenly sitting up after all, swinging his legs from his bed, and stalking over to Matt's side of the room. Matt sits up in a hurry too, and watches Mello warily from behind his goggles' lenses. Matt doesn't say anything, though, when Mello sits down beside him. Mello's slender weight makes the mattress shift slightly, and tilts their shoulders close together.

"What about... him?" Matt asks, gesturing vaguely upwards.

Mello puffs out a breath of air. "You're _Matt_."

As if that were in any shape or form an actual answer.

Maybe Mello senses Matt's doubt, because he looks away and rubs at his face.

It's silent and it's awkward, and Matt kind of wishes he could make sense of it but apparently this – whatever _this_ is – doesn't come equipt with diagrams or a user's manual. He hadn't even seen it coming. It simply... is. And that's why he gives in, in the end, flopping backwards across his bed and putting one of his hands over his eyes. Mello is worryingly still. Matt can practically _hear_ the cogs whirring in his friend's head. Then Mello wriggles around a little, and Matt can feel the pressure against the bed, when the blond pushes one of his palms down near Matt's shoulder. Matt can feel it, too, when Mello leans in.

Mello's hair brushes against Matt's face and kind of makes him want to sneeze.

Matt says, embarrassed by the waver in his voice, "We'll still be best friends?"

He shifts his hand away from his goggles, to better study Mello's continued silence.

Mello is giving him his best _are you stupid?_ look. "Of course. I like you, don't I?" he mutters, as though that's supposed to explain everything, and perhaps it does, on some level. Mello's cheeks are going a little bit pink. "I've always liked you," he adds.

Matt frowns. Matt smiles. Matt wrinkles up his nose, as Mello's hair brushes against it again, like a blond curtain dusting at Matt's freckles; he suspects he really would sneeze, except that his entire body is frozen in anticipation of whatever it is that Mello's about to do.

"Hey," the blond says softly, then leans in so close that Matt gives up trying to focus. And Mello's lips are warm, and Mello has both his hands somewhere around Matt's shoulders, and Matt... Matt is kissing him back. In a weird way it's actually more awkward than it was the first time, perhaps because they're both fully aware of what they're doing; perhaps because they've chosen it consciously. After a moment, Matt lets his hands move, ever so tentatively, and takes hold of Mello's waist. His touch is only feather-light, but Mello moves into it instantly, as if he can't help but gravitate towards Matt's grasp. Matt is so surprised that he sucks on Mello's lip by mistake; Mello lets out a funny little moaning gasp, and so Matt does it again, on purpose now. He's a bit worried that Mello will find it lame if he does stuff twice over like that, but Mello doesn't seem to mind in the least.

Mello's cheeks are undeniably pink, and his eyes are wide and bright, when he pulls back to breathe.

Matt makes a vague wanting motion with one of his fingers, and Mello leans back in for another kiss.

When Matt's lips starts to relax to what they're doing, and Matt's hands shift a little more firmly against Mello's waist, Mello rocks in against him and makes Matt exhale in surprise. When Mello moves even closer, sliding one of his legs over Matt, so that he's practically sitting on top of the redhead, Matt grasps even tighter, grins, and shrugs them both sideways until he's the one lying half on top of the blond. Mello's hair is flung across the bed-cover like a crooked halo, and Matt can hardly breathe, because he can actually feel Mello's dick against him. Matt's eyes grow almost painfully wide as he processes that realization. It's difficult to keep his thoughts straight – except that _straight_ is apparently right off the menu now – and he steadies himself by reaching out and brushing the boy's hair slowly away from his face. Mello closes his eyes beneath Matt's touch, and that makes Matt bolder; he runs his thumb along one of Mello's eyebrows, then leans in jerkily, embarrassed to be doing it, and places butterfly kisses against each of Mello's eyelids, first the one, then the other. Unsure as to whether it will get him kicked onto the floor, but somehow incapable of stopping himself regardless, he whispers, haltingly, "You're really kinda pretty, Mels."

Mello growls lowly, as if he's cranky, but his eyes are bright when he opens them again. Either way, Matt thinks the blond is kinda pretty when he pouts, too, and he's rather getting the hang of this whole thing, so he simply kisses Mello again, to shut him up. Matt likes this new angle better. He likes the way that Mello's hands are trying to pull him down closer, and the way that Mello's hips are trying to push up against his own, too. It's a little bit overwhelming, though, when Mello slides his hands beneath the back of Matt's shirt, because _those are Mello's fingers touching his bare skin, and it's not like ever before, oh God_. Matt can't – it's hard to think – too much texture and sound and feeling and the beat of blood and he doesn't—

"I don't know, don't know what to do," Matt confesses, an awkward rush of tumbling words.

Mello blushes, rolls his eyes to pretend otherwise, and snap-mumbles something about Matt being a genius and _surely you're clever enough to work it out_. For half a second Matt is rather of the opinion that, well, if Mello's going to take that bitchy tone, then he can go and wank in the bathroom all on his own perfectly well, thank you very much. Except that then Mello gives him this unexpected smile and _wriggles_ beneath him, angling his hips so that his rubs against Matt _just like that_, and suddenly the bathroom is much, much too far away. Matt scrunches his hands into the bed-cover, and somehow the two of them are pressed together, and Mello is gripping at Matt's back and mouthing at Matt's neck, and Matt has his hands on Mello's face, his hands on Mello's belly, his hands down the back of Mello's jeans, Mello's arse soft against his fingers. And then Mello makes this keening noise in the depths of his throat, rougher and deeper than Matt's ever heard it on the nights, when Mello thinks Matt is asleep and jerks off; Mello's whole body trembles in Matt's embrace as the sound bursts from between his lips, and his fingers clutch at Matt, bruising, needing.

Matt groans, and comes in his pants.


	4. Chapter 4

Perhaps the most startling thing is that nothing changes. Not... not in any tangible way, anyway. Mello still gets cranky and acts like a bitch, and Mello still laughs and blows bubbles in his chocolate milk at breakfast, and Mello still spends a gazillion or so hours with his back bent over his textbooks. They still sit next to each other, too, in the classes they happen to share, just like they've always done, and Mello still grumbles when Matt happens to gets an answer right before he does.

And yet, it's completely different.

When Mello's hand brushes against Matt's, it feels deliberate. When Mello smirks and teases him about dumb shit, it feels like the words have bewildered themselves in Matt's brain, so that even negatives are somehow a positive thing. When Mello flops all over Matt in the free-reading corner of the library, his feet up on a beanbag and his head in Matt's lap, it feels as though everyone ought to be watching them. And, when they leave their bedroom in the mornings, it feels as though everyone ought to be able to tell, with the ease of a single glance, that the reason why Matt's hair is even messier than usual is because Mello has had his hands tangled up amongst it, and the reason why Mello's lips are pink is because Matt has been kissing them.

It takes Matt what half an eternity to work out that nobody actually _can_ tell.

Well.

Near can tell, Matt theorizes, but that's to be expected. Near has always watched the pair of them, from behind his block-towers, from within the security of his train-track circles. Near's grey eyes follow them into corners and down long hallways. Hell, Near has probably been watching Mello since forever; he's certainly watched Matt since the day Matt first arrived. Matt remembers how it was, small and rugged up in a coat that wasn't his, his too-cold hand safe in Mr. Wammy's, and dried tear-smudges still on his cheeks as they stood there, on the gravel drive, giving Matt breathing space and a chance to crane his neck and stare up at the huge house that was going to grow into being his home. Near had been watching him out of a window even then, so tiny that nothing but his eyes and fingertips, and a shock of white hair, had been visible. Still. Near might have been watching him, but it was Mello who'd powered down the stairs like a bright-eyed rocket, pausing only a second, to obtain Mr. Wammy's good-natured permission, before peering beneath Matt's beanie, tugging at Matt's scarf, commenting on Matt's girly eyelashes, and generally claiming Matt, within the space of ten minutes, as his New Own Friend.

All of which is besides the point, the point being -- if anyone knows, then it's Near.

Near, and maybe Roger. Roger stands in doorways, sometimes, pausing mid-walk with his eyebrows disapproving and his lips pursed, as though he really wants to say something but doesn't quite know how. He never actually does say anything, but Matt's ears heat up whenever he sees him. Roger is the only one, so far as Matt knows, who's ever come close to actually _catching_ them together – early May, and they'd somehow ended up in the shrubbery near Roger's office. In the shrubbery, and Mello had been toying with Matt's hair, their faces so close, and Roger had leant out of his window and demanded to know _what on earth do you boys think you're doing?_ Mello had beamed up at him angelically and claimed to be counting Matt's freckles for a probability study. Roger had done nothing but stare down at them for a very, very long moment, before nodding curtly, as though he'd actually accepted that, then had snapped at them to get out of the garden either way.

But nobody _really_ knows. Not in a truly-knowing kind of way. Not in the kind of way where they could say anything directly.

Still, Matt knows. Matt knows, and it's like a pool of warmth at the back of his stomach, at the base of his spine. Whenever Mello puts his hand up in class, to answer some complicated question with the ease of one plus one, and the other kids look at him with that disgruntled appreciation that they always employ, somehow that's reflected onto Matt too, now. Matt's always been super proud of Mello but now, now Mello is kind of like his. So it's Matt's pride too. Even if only he knows it.

Perhaps _because_ only he knows it.

To be honest, Matt isn't sure that he really wants anyone else to know. They might try and take it away from him, might put them in different classes, would definitely put them in different bedrooms. Which is why Matt puts his foot down and refuses to let Mello actually snog him in public.

As much as he would sometimes like to.

**►**

There are weeks of kissing, mussed up amongst dog-eared books and Mello's pillows. Matt learns how to make Mello mewl against his mouth, and how to make Mello come so hard that his hands leave purple shadows on Matt's arms. Sometimes they rock against each other, frantic or slow. Sometimes Matt has to escape to the bathroom on his own, because someone has knocked on the door and asked for permission to come in and yammer on about something. Sometimes it's late at night, and the room is dark, and then they touch themselves on Matt's bed, their knees pressed together, their eyes watching each other in the absence of light, and when Matt's hand is jerking against his dick he imagines that it's Mello's hand, and he hears nothing but Mello's breath changing speed next to him, and he likes to come when Mello does, so he can pretend that he directly caused that hacking little gasp of flurried completion. It's quiet, and it makes Matt blush, and it makes Matt want more, and he can't understand why Mello doesn't just _ask_, except maybe Mello doesn't want what Matt wants. Because there's no way that Mello could be nervous of... anything. Because he's Mello. Mello doesn't get nervous.

Matt gets so nervous that his tongue sticks to the top of his mouth, but it doesn't stop him thinking about it.

The sun is tilting in low through the curtains on a Saturday afternoon when Matt rolls over on the bed, shuts off his Game Boy, takes Mello's book away from him, brushes his hair out of his eyes, and begins to kiss him. Mello studies him curiously for a second, and Matt can feel the unasked question in the way that Mello is holding himself, but then the blond just leans up a little, so as to better answer the kiss. Matt waits until Mello's cheeks have gotten a little flushed, until Mello's hands are smoothing up and down Matt's back that way they do, until Mello's hips are moving slightly. Then Matt strokes his hand down Mello's belly, slowly, slowly, as if the very universe hangs on the angle of its journey. He puts his index finger on the button of Mello's jeans and asks, "M-may I?"

Mello falls uncharacteristically still.

Mello bites at his lip, soft skin tugged by quiet teeth.

Then Mello nods, and tilts himself a little way up, snug against Matt's hand.

It... it's not as though Matt hasn't had plenty of experience with his own anatomy. It's not as though he hasn't seen Mello's naked dick before, either. After all, they share a bedroom, they both use the boys' lav, and they both piss standing up. But this is different. Seeing Mello slip on a pair of pyjamas, or lose hold of one corner of his towel, is nothing at all like seeing Mello spread beneath him, Mello's breath hot and his blue eyes wide, Mello's face flushed and heated all at once, as he stares up at Matt in a fixed sort of way way, and Mello's dick, Mello's dick standing increasingly to attention, as Matt finishes pulling Mello's jeans and boxers all the way off. Mello's feet push at his jeans to help, bare toes catching at Matt's wrists. Matt just gazes, and blushes, and breathes, and tries to count to ten. When he reaches seven and a half he reaches his right hand out, ever so tentatively, and Mello lets loose a growl, very low and caught up in itself, as Matt brushes the back of his hand along the length of Mello's dick. Matt turns his hand and presses his fingers a little closer, feather light still, feeling the soft skin growing ever smoother; he circles his thumb around the head. Some part of his brain shivers in surprise, as he finds himself wondering what it would taste like, but Mello interrupts Matt's thoughts with another growl, and Matt's thumb presses a little firmer in automatic response. Mello's own hand shoots down, then, with a kind of begging impatience, grabbing hold, entrapping Matt's hand against him. Matt gasps jaggedly at the sensation of Mello's skin pressing tight on both sides of his hand; different, demanding.

"Please," says Mello.

Matt's world goes up in smoke, in a better way than he could have ever have imagined, when Mello lets go again, and it's Matt's own hand, Matt's own hand that strokes and jerks at Mello until the blond is gasping and moaning beneath him, and it's Matt's own name on Mello's lips when the boy comes, stuttered out like a prophecy or a promise.

When Matt wipes his hand clean and wriggles his jeans downwards to finish himself off – he frigging _aches_ from not having come in his pants at the sight of Mello's hips bucking against his wrist, of Mello's dick pulsing within his grasp – he doesn't expect Mello to move. He certainly doesn't expect Mello to wriggle around on the bed, push Matt's hands away and glare up at him, as if Matt were about to do something entirely unfair and completely unreasonable. He doesn't expect Mello to wrap those pale, slender fingers around his dick, either, but that's exactly what Mello does. Mello is gazing up at Matt intently, the tip of his tongue peeking out the corner of his mouth, the motions of his hand slow and concentrated. Matt bites his lip hard and decides that nothing could be better than this, nothing, nothing, god, the feel of Mello touching him, oh, and then Mello shimmies a little closer, gets a little rougher and whispers, "Come for me, Matt."

Matt doesn't need to be asked twice.

Mello crows with victorious delight, flops back against the bed, and grins like a lunatic. Matt wriggles around and flops down beside him, not caring for the moment that it's a tiny bit gross and that maybe they should do something about that; he just grins like a fool when Mello shifts a second time, and puts his face against Matt's shirt sleeve. Then there's nothing but the sound of Matt's pulse behind his ears, and the shape Mello's mouth against Matt's shirt, until Mello observes, a little breathlessly, "We need to do that more often."

Matt can't even answer, just grins an impossible bit more, puts his arm around Mello's side, and pulls the half-naked boy a fraction closer. He can feel two points of Mello's crucifix sharp against him. The fine, invisible fuzz-hair on Mello's hip is soft beneath Matt's fingers. Mello bites at the cloth of Matt's shirt, but shifts in against him obligingly regardless.

And maybe Matt was wrong, maybe there is no such thing as _can't get better_.


	5. Chapter 5

Time moves on, in its usual winsome way, and L arrives home from a case in Bangladesh. Matt and Mello and Near gravitate together in the eastern wing, gathered in one of the hallways that the other students rarely use. Portraits of stern-expressioned old ladies look down at them from sweetly-gilded frames along the wall. Mello is sucking on chocolate eclairs with faux bravado, and Near is staring at Matt from over the top of Optimus Prime's blue plastic head. There's the usual hush-hush fussing from Roger, as though the three of them aren't clever enough to know full well that their privileged position brings certain expectations in its wake. Mello makes a snide remark, and Roger's eyebrows bristle. Matt aims a kick at his best friend's ankle because, seriously, Roger's eyebrows are correct about one thing, and that's that the right to visit L isn't a business to be messed with. Of course, Mello knows that, perhaps more so than the rest of them even, and Matt is also fully aware that the blond never actually pushes the boundaries an iota more than he get away with, but... sometimes even Matt gets twitchy. And Near standing there, in that way that he has, with his head tilted against the wallpaper and his eyes on Matt, doesn't exactly help things. Not that Matt cares if Near watches them. It's just a little creepy, that's all. Really.

The grandfather clock in the conservatory strikes six, and the steady fall of footsteps emerges beneath the final chime. Mr. Wammy is carrying a black umbrella beneath one arm and there are splotched raindrops darkening his jacket; he's not been home for long. He and Roger share a comprehending smile above the boys' heads, and Roger shrugs his shoulders slightly, as he passes the three of them into the older gentleman's care. A certain quiet, the variety of which Roger would have loved a moment earlier, descends over Matt, Mello and Near as they follow their protector down the portrait-adorned hall, then into another, slightly darker and slightly older, lined with oak panels and the scent of old books and damp kindling. Shush, shush, and the sound of feet moving. Not even Mello would dream of messing with Mr. Wammy. They know even less about him than they know about L, but it doesn't matter. Wammy's children are accustomed to obfuscated personal histories. Besides, Mr. Wammy is the reason they're here, after all; here, and not in the places that lurk at the corners of their memories like malingering bruises (it's scents, for Matt, more than images; dry dust, and rain on the salt plains). Mr. Wammy is like Father Christmas, too, except that he only visits irregularly and can always be trusted to bring with him the one thing they want more than all else: L.

Sure, there are other presents, too. There's always something for each of them, carefully placed on the mahogany table in L's study – gifts socializing with a generous plate of cake, and a cheery row of teacups. It's a blueberry tart, the evening after the Bangladesh case, and a plate laden with iced vanilla cupcakes. Matt makes note of them in a trained-to-observe kind of way but, truth be told, he's significantly more interested in the game console that's sitting proudly between a stout hard-cover, all about international military codes, and a net bag holding a muddle of polished wooden blocks. The blocks are presumably some kind of mind-teaser for Near; after all, the book is obviously intended for Mello. It's proof of how well L knows them, actually. Anyone else, Matt rather thinks, would be inclined to bring Mello expensive chocolate, and would miss out on the glow that the book conjures up. Matt doesn't always get games, either, and, even when he does, they tend to require some kind of construction or mastering – even this console is a prototype, he can tell with a glance, and his fingers twitch at the prospect of coaxing it into proper working order.

It goes without saying that all of their games are lesson, and all of their lessons are rewards.

They know a little bit more about L than they know about Mr. Wammy. After all, L was one of them once. Matt remembers, back when he was small enough to still speak with the broad vowels of his original English, long winter evenings spent sitting on cushions in the library whilst L read to them. Sometimes L picked the books, and sometimes he would delegate the choice, but no two evenings would see the same text, nor even the same genre. One night they might hear from _On the Origin of Species_, the next, _Fingerprint Mechanics_, the night after that _Through The Looking Glass_. Even back then, L was special, and only six of them would be there with him – Near, impossibly tiny, curled up on the lap of the black-haired boy with the strange eyes, who nowadays is only mentioned in cautioning undertones; Linda, with her expression dreamy and her eyes lighting up when fiction was chosen; Mello, leaning between Matt and the brown-haired girl, A, that nobody speaks of at all, not undertones nor otherwise, as though they've all forgotten her. Matt remembers her, because it was A who taught him how to pull a radio apart and put it back together again, and because it was A used to play with Mello's hair, when they listened to L read, as though the paleness of it against her soft fingers was calming in a way that even L's presence was not. Matt remembers her, because she let Matt put his ear against her bare belly, even though she was both a girl and practically an adult, to hear a second heartbeat snuggled in her stomach. One morning Roger told them that A had died, and Beyond scowled into his porridge, and the whispers said she'd hung herself, but Matt knew better, because she'd shown him her suitcase the night before and had hugged him till she cried.

It's funny, the way that seeing L always makes Matt wonder whether she really did leave, but he's never been brave enough to ask, just in case Roger had actually been telling the truth.

Anyway. L doesn't stop being a mystery, just because he was originally part of their childhood. Sometimes they see him individually, and he speaks about reports and classwork, but the detective's heart is never really in it. Sometimes, he sees them together, and offers them cake, only to steal back the trimmings for himself. Always, he tells stories about cases he's concluded. He picks their brains as he talks, courting them into finding a solution before he can present it to them, as if they were living in a crime show on the BBC, except that L's cases make those ones look simplistic. Whenever L is in the room, with his jeans rolled up, and his hair falling into his eyes above his teacup, Mello and Near are blind to everything else. Matt knows, because he spends most of his time in the same condition, and the left-over percentage gazing at them. When they were younger, even a year ago, L would grin at Matt around a bite of cake, as though he knew, and Matt would feel his face go hot. After the Bangladesh case, Matt finds himself simply grinning back.

L tip-taps the end of his teaspoon against the desk and looks more knowing than ever.

After the Bangladesh case, though, L doesn't tell them a story. Instead, he eats his blueberry tart and brings them up to date with a certain Japanese case that has been creeping onto the news even in Winchester. When he's licking his fingers he breaks off abruptly, meets Matt's gaze directly, and declares, "It's good."

Matt can't help but believe that his idol isn't actually talking about the food, but there's no way to ever prove it.

**►**

Mello can never sleep after L's visits. He lays awake, staring at the ceiling. Sometimes he gets up and wanders around the room restlessly, peering through the curtains, stacking and un-stacking his textbooks, mumbling, muttering, driving Matt absolutely crazy.

"I want to be like him," Mello hums tonight, his eyes bright in the light, which is gleaming from one of the ornate lamps in the gardens outside.

The first time Matt had seen the garden, he'd stared wide-eyed and had concluded, in the privacy of his own mind, that Wammy's belonged to Narnia, at night-time. Now he's used to the old iron lamp-posts and just wishes that Mello would shut the bloody curtains. "I _know_," he grumbles. "You can, you will, but could you please sleep now?"

In the past Mello might have sulked, or stalked some more, or crawled back into bed. The night after the visit from Bangladesh, he clambers into Matt's bed instead.

"I want to write down all the things he's ever told us," he confides. His breath is hot in Matt's ear and it might have been a turn-on, if Matt weren't so freaking tired from the emotional stress that L's visits always cause. Mello hasn't closed the curtains properly, either, they're caught on a pile of books, and there's still too much light in the room.

Matt rolls over, and stares at his friend. "What, you want to write L's biography?"

"Sure, why not? He's just... I mean, don't you ever think about it? After all the things you've heard?"

Matt isn't entirely sure. He isn't entirely sure that the big wide world, beyond the stone walls of Wammy's House, would see L as the shining knight that Mello – and, okay, Matt himself – perceives him to be. He isn't entirely sure that L would even appreciate the gesture. Besides. Well. The honest truth is that, most of the time, Matt really does want Mello to reach the top, to be the next L, to be _amazing_... but there are also moments, like right now, when Matt's tired, and his emotions ache, and he just wants to sleep, when he would really prefer it if there were no L at all, and Mello were simply Mello.

Which is quite amazing enough, anyway, so far as Matt is concerned.

Mello prods him in the arm. "You still awake?"

Matt sighs, decides that offence is the best defence, and curls up against Mello. The boy's taking up most of Matt's bed as it is, anyway. Matt likes the feel of Mello's legs near his, and he strokes vague at Mello's cloth-covered stomach for a second or two, then closes his eyes and stumbles out, "'m asleep. You too."

He's pretty sure he can actually hear Mello pout, but the blond lets it be, and doesn't speak any more.

Matt thinks it was worth it, the next morning, when he wakes up with Mello's hair all tangled in his face and making his nose itch. True, he's also pretty sure that it's the final proof that he's really, really, incurably weird. But he's also beginning to realize that too much time has passed, too much time since the moment when he could have said no to these feelings lurching and spinning inside of his ribs.

Mello grumbles, when Matt shifts closer against him, but he doesn't pull away, just moves his whole body upwards, to use Matt's arm as a pillow, and falls promptly back asleep. Matt plays with Mello's crucifix, counts Mello's breathing, and waits for the alarm clock to go off.

He's starting to suspect that he doesn't actually care about _anything_ any more, so long as Mello feels the same way.

**► **

And then L dies in a distant country.

And then Matt makes a promise, which he doesn't really intend to keep.

And, when Mello shoulders a bag, and walks out that gate, the blond doesn't look back, not even once.


	6. Chapter 6

The week after Mello leaves isn't worth talking about, so Matt doesn't. He goes to class, he eats his meals, he interacts when his teachers ask him to. He adheres to the letter of the law, not a skerrick more and not a skerrick less. When he can, he stays in his room. He keeps out of trouble, keeps out of the way of all the ones who know better – all the ones who are distracted by L's death, all the ones who wouldn't be able to understand that, right now, right now, Matt wants nothing more than to bury his face in Mello's pillow, and pick at stray blond hairs.

He wishes that he'd at least told Mello his name, his real name, the name he hasn't heard since he was brought to this place. This place, which has given him so much and taken even more away.

He wishes Near would stop watching him with those dark-ringed eyes.

He wishes so very many things.

The day they remember him, long enough to have someone come and take Mello's things away, Matt climbs the wall on his own for the first time. He walks the road into Winchester proper. He looks at the people without really wanting to. He buys a pack of cigarettes from a too-skinny girl in the suburbs; she's all hipbones and collarbones and mercifully dark hair. Matt barely speaks to her, but she takes his money anyway.

He finds the busted motorcycle on his way home, tucked up amongst bushes and sticky grass. It takes him half a week to bring it back to Wammy's, piece by piece, day by day. And it's Roger who discovers him behind the science rooms, grease on his face, and tools, stolen from the caretaker, scattered around his knees. Perhaps it's a symptom of the chasm that L has left them all in, when Roger simply gazes at him for a long, silent moment, then turns and walks away.

Or maybe he just can't be bothered asking the usual _what do you think you're doing, young man?_, because he already knows the answer.

_Preparing to break a promise_, Matt would have answered.

There's even a tiny chance that Roger isn't quite as big an idiot as Mello had always said he was.

That, or he's just too busy preparing things for the new L, to be worried about something as pointless as Matt.

** ►**

Matt doesn't find Mello's secret stash until he's finished wiring the bike's tail-light. The space behind the bedroom's skirting-board is practically empty, but for two Yorkie Bars, the stubborn scent of milk chocolate, and an oddly shaped envelope with his name written upon it in painfully familiar handwriting; _dear Matt_. Matt sits on the floor for eighteen minutes, his mind wandering to places he doesn't want it to go, and his thumb tracing the shape of Mello's crucifix beneath the envelope's crisp paper. He wants to know if Mello has written him a letter, but he can't bring himself to open it to see, can't bring himself to touch the crucifix directly. He pushes the envelope gently into his pocket, furious and distraught, and punches the wall until he finally, finally, finally has an excuse to let the tears fall.

**► **

And weeks turn into months, and months turn into years.

**► **

Near is L, and Roger is Watari, and Linda lands a place at Camberwell College of Arts. Matt rides all the way to Aberdeen, just because he can, and then all the way back again. His bedroom at Wammy's is almost empty now, but there are three postcards waiting for him on his bedside table, covered in Near's meticulous handwriting. Matt doubts they were posted in the places their postmarks are declaring, and they tell him a lot of nothing, except for the repeated idea that Matt ought to come and work for him. Matt has better things to be doing. He rides all the way to Tintagel, just because he can, and then all the way back again. An old woman with pink-washed hair, at a bus-stop near Winchester Castle, teaches him how to pack a pipe and blow smoke rings, and tells him a story about King Arthur's Round Table, which he's heard a thousand times before. Matt breaks into the office at Wammy's House and burns all their documents, the whole lot of them, in a steel drum behind the science rooms, and nobody comes to stop him. He smokes as he watches the ashes spiral in the night air. The flames devour the paper, and the photographs crumple and burn in the gleam of the ashes; Linda with her cheerful pigtails, Beyond with his unsettling sadness. Matt only saves two of them, unpinning them carefully from the staples holding them to their files, and slides them into a slip of paper and down the side of one of his boots, for safekeeping. Their faces follow him even when he can't see them; Mello, trying to look so serious for the photographer, and A, with her quiet smile.

By the light of the fire he opens an envelope that he's been carrying around for years, its corners bent and its white dirtied to a shade of grey. The letter isn't what he had expected, the letter leaves out all the things Matt had believed it would say. It's not even worthy of the name letter, it's just an A4 page torn from one of Mello's old school books; it's eight words in a still-not-forgotten handwriting, eight words that make Matt's stomach twist with almost pain. He reads it, once, twice, three times, then tears it into tiny pieces and watches each one burn.

_One day, you'll have to come find me._

The crucifix is smaller than he remembers, the chain more fragile, and it curls like a broken creature in the palm of his hand.

This time, when Matt leaves, it's his turn not to look back.

**► **

Something tells Matt that he would probably really like the States, if only he were here under different circumstances. As it is, it's dark and seedy, and there's too much poverty on the streets, and he wishes someone would fucking do something about it, and how is it that he seems to be living out every bad Hollywood flick he's ever seen – except that he isn't a spy, and he isn't a hero, he's just a kid with a motorbike, ginger stubble on his chin, and a gift for hacking into things. He has a little cash in his pocket, too, and a passport that Near had organized for him, strangely enough, despite the fact that Near's new babysitter, that American with the military look, obviously didn't approve; Matt had sworn he'd pay it back, somehow, just to escape being in the grey-eyed boy's debt. No, Matt's not a hero, and he isn't even looking for the girl he loves, some hypothetical Hollywood heroine who would be eternally grateful to him for finding her; no, of course, not, because that scenario would belong to some charmed life that Matt isn't living. Matt's just a kid, looking for a boy with a track record of not appreciating it when people try to help him out.

Which is why Matt does what he does. He doesn't actually hunt Mello down at all. He lets Mello find him, instead. It's just luck, really. Oh, luck aided by weeks of careful research, sure, but, so long as Mello never directly asks, Matt won't be telling.

The bar is also seedy, and dark, and pretty bad, and Matt thinks that maybe it's a good thing that he already has enough back story on Mello, to know all the things that the blond _hasn't_ done to work his way to his current position, else the whorish clothes he has on, when he swaggers through the front door, might have made Matt's brain leap to the wrong conclusion. As it is, Matt has to suck at his bottom lip, and tilt his head a little to the side.

It takes Mello, ever-observant Mello, a full five minutes to even notice the red-headed young man in the corner, that's how nondescript Matt is.

The funny thing is, Matt's spent so long working out how, exactly, to best get himself back into Mello's life, that he hasn't really considered what will happen when he's managed it. Matt isn't prepared for the horrified way that Mello's eyes widen, when they meet his gaze; Matt isn't prepared for the manner in which Mello stands up, slowly, sinuously, dangerously – Matt isn't prepared for the way Mello snatches his coat back up, and walks back out into the night without so much as a word.

Matt gets all the way to his stupid rented room before he gives himself permission to fall apart, and by then his pain has derailed into fury anyway. He breaks a few things, only to spend the next two days putting them back together again.

He finds himself back at the bar on Monday.

Mello is already there, waiting in the corner that Matt had inhabited on Friday. He buys Matt a beer – there's a smile for the waitress, who apparently knows better than to card either of them – waits for it to arrive, then lets his eyes storm up and glower. He snaps, "Where the fuck were you on the weekend, I sat here for-fucking-ever."

By closing time there's a row of origami birds, made from paper napkins and chocolate wrappers, lined up in front of them. There are two empty beers, as well, and a muddle of soda cans, and Mello has not only told all but one of his Mafia goons to piss the hell off, but he also has his hand on Matt's knee. When Mello lowers his lashes and grins at Matt, Matt knows full well that neither of them are actually drunk enough to pretend that they aren't aware of what they're doing, but he goes along with it anyway, flicking a thumb out to tuck a strand of hair behind Mello's left ear. Mello tightens his hold on Matt's knee, and tilts his face sideways, to rest his cheek against Matt's hand. He moves his own hand up Matt's body, coming to rest at Matt's chest. Matt can't move, can't breathe, can't even bring himself to care about who might be seeing this, them, here, like this. He wants to kiss the blond, wants to touch him, wants to haul him onto his lap, wants to shout at him, too, and rage at the fact that he left him all those years ago—

—and then Mello's fingers close around the crucifix at Matt's throat, and then Mello is on his feet, so abruptly that the barstool rattles in his wake, and is gesturing to his remaining bodyguard that it's time for them to leave. Matt doesn't even have time to so much as stand himself, before they're out the door.

Even the origami birds look a shade duller, without Mello in their orbit.


	7. Chapter 7

It's another week gone, another week of talking in the bar, before Mello agrees to come home with him.

Matt's one room is the proverbial shit, of course, but, seeing as Matt generally gives a proverbial rat's arse about things like that, he hasn't paid it all that much attention. He realizes he's waiting, though, when Mello steps through the front door and sort of sniffs at his surroundings. Matt might have thought that he was over needing Mello's approval but the relief, which burns through him when Mello simply shrugs, chalks one up against the theory.

Matt locks the door behind them, and slips the chain in place.

This place of his, it really isn't much, though. A sofa with the stuffing coming out, something vaguely resembling a kitchen, a bathtub and a toilet tucked away behind a cracked glass divider. A double mattress, on the floor, with sheets and a blanket folded neatly at the end. Greying carpet covered with the snaking tendrils of electrical cords, centred around a mess of technology on the laminated table. The walls are layered with scraps of paper, with notes, with newspaper cuttings. They flutter to themselves as Mello walks across the room to look through the window, to look down at the alley below with its rubbish growing ghostly in the falling light. Someone has painted a dark crowd of faces onto the bricks, seeping from the pavement up onto the wall; the higher reaches are coloured by the less disturbing lines of taggers.

"I've seen worse," says Mello, casually, as though to re-enforce the implications of his shrug.

Matt wants to ask him _when_, or _where_, but he's too busy watching Mello's profile in the half-light to be bothered with hearing the sound of his own voice. He wants to run his thumb along Mello's chin.

Mello touches at his own face, as though he's felt Matt's thought, and turns aside to study the wall instead.

Matt watches him, as he reads the clippings. They've been talking about the Kira case, these last few days, coming at it from tangents, from the shadows of unmentioned implications. They both know what Mello is trying to do here. Right now, Matt doesn't give a shit about any of it, but he still watches intently, as Mello's mind takes in the contents of his walls.

The blond raises his eyebrows; lowers them again. "I thought you said you weren't following the case."

Matt wets his lips with his tongue. He can feel the warmth from Mello's body as he walks up behind him, can feel the tension they've been filling the room with. Mello is even more volatile than he used to be, Mello is a match waiting to be lit, a lighter with a too-easy spark. Matt feels it beneath his skin, and it buzzes. He wishes Mello would allow himself to be touched. He wishes Mello would do some touching himself, but he hasn't, not since Monday night when he'd put his hand on Matt's chest and then run away.

Matt shakes his head. "I never said that. I said I wasn't obsessed with it, not like you." He's off-handed, as though it doesn't matter either way.

Mello just looks at him, that wide-eyed innocent look that means he's at his most deadly.

Matt slides a pack of Marlboros from his back pocket, and taps a cigarette out between his fingers. "I also had a debt to deal with. And I was looking for you, wasn't I."

They've been dancing around this for days. Mello hasn't asked him how he came to be here, hasn't asked him what he's living off, hasn't asked him what he did in all the years between.

Matt puts the pack back in his pocket, and lights up. He steadies himself with warm smoke.

Mello leans back against the wall, paper rustling all around him. The sun has almost set, now, and the light in the room is dispersing into a dull gleam. Mello's eyes seem dark in his face. "You've been working for _him_," the blond says, tone left hanging three inches from being an actual accusation.

Matt studies his cigarette; studies the way Mello's hands are pressed against the newspaper cuttings on the wall, long and slender fingers spread over apathetic headlines. Mello is refusing to look at him. There are a thousand things Matt could say. Instead, he shrugs. "Yeah. I needed the money, and I needed a way here. Work is work. And he doesn't exactly ask much, anyway. Well, he asks, but he knows I'm not going to tell him. Not the one thing he wants to know."

"He asks about me."

"Of course."

Quiet. Hushed sounds rising up from the alley. A girl shouting with her friends in Spanish. The tap of the blind against the window, sway, sway, in the evening breeze.

Mello meets Matt's gaze. His expression twists. His hands press closer to the newspapers. He glances around the room and says, "Don't get any ideas, Matt. I'll be sleeping on the couch."

Matt snuffs out his cigarette on an empty pizza box, and crosses his arms against his chest; self-preservation and a point-to-prove combined. "Really?" he inquires calmly, and maybe Mello doesn't expect that, maybe Mello has grown used to people simply following his statements as if they were orders, because something in Mello's stance alters slightly. "Really?" says Matt again, stepping closer now, his voice smooth as if he weren't trembling inside. The expression on Mello's face – Mello's face, which hasn't changed at all, really, because it still broadcasts every nuance of his thoughts in the most ridiculous way – snags at Matt's insides and makes him bolder. Maybe Mello has been expecting him to just pretend that all those things hadn't happened between them, all that time ago. Maybe Mello has been expecting him to have forgotten; yes, that would be typical of the blond. For a guy with such an ego, he's always been amazingly good at believing he means nothing to anyone around him.

Matt hasn't forgotten a thing. He hasn't even tried.

There haven't been any blondes passing through his arms, in some empty bid for replacement. He's had enough time to think about exactly what it is that he wants, and what he wants is Mello and, for any more direct and pressing needs, well, Matt has two perfectly good hands and no qualms about making use of them.

Matt hasn't forgotten a thing, and Mello put his hand on Matt's knee on Monday night, and that has to mean something.

And now Mello is standing less than two feet away, tarted up in those clothes that are clinging to every inch of him, the feathers from his stupid coat looking so soft against his jaw, and his hands pressed against Matt's wall so hard that his knuckles are going white. And all Matt knows is that he wants to reach out and touch, touch, touch, take hold of Mello's face, press Mello against the wall, hold him, hold him, long and hard and hard and long. And maybe Matt has just had enough, or maybe it's the shot in his veins from the bar, or maybe it's just inevitable, but that's exactly what Matt does do.

Mello is warm and malleable beneath Matt's grasp, as he lets Matt push him closer to the wall, as he lets Matt tangle a hand in pale hair, as he lets Matt press in against him. Paper tears at Mello's shoulders.

"Really?" Matt asks, one last time, and he feels like he's chewing on his own heart.

Mello's eyes blaze. His hands lurch away from the wall and grab for skin and clothes; he hisses between his teeth and pulls hard at Matt's hair, yanking Matt's head backwards to study him intently, as though those blue eyes of his could crawl around inside Matt's head and down to the pit of his stomach. Matt bares his teeth in a knowing way, because suddenly he does, suddenly he _does_ know exactly what this is, and what this is is Mello, Mello like when was a kid, Mello faced with the only thing in the universe that he isn't game to demand as his birthright. This one thing.

"Tell me you don't want this," Matt urges. He can taste Mello's breath against his mouth, even as the blond stands there against the wall, his hands gripping Matt's clothes, his eyes wild. "Tell me this isn't what you've always wanted, and I'll walk right out." Doesn't matter that this is his place, doesn't matter that Mello is the one who should do the walking, because Mello already has walked, and it's Matt's turn now, Matt's turn to call the shots for once.

Mello stares holes into Matt's soul, blinks slowly, then re-finds his old, familiar smirk from somewhere beneath the grime and polish of this city, and this life that he's been living. He doesn't loosen his grasp on Matt's hair, but he does tilt his head forwards and down, and licks a line along Matt's throat.

Matt lungs catch and shiver, and he buries his hand deeper amongst Mello's hair.

Mello curls a hand around Matt's back, smoothing downwards and finding it a home in the empty back pocket of Matt's jeans. Mello's touch is a time machine and the years roll back, back, until nothing has existed but the two of them and their own little universe. Matt slides his own hand lower, fingers against Mello's neck and behind his ear, tickled by feathers and the throb of Mello's pulse in his veins. "Would it kill you to say it?" Matt whispers, tongue thick with emotion, forehead against Mello's forehead and their bodies hot against each other.

"It might," Mello chuckles, low and bitter and crooked, and tilts his face to be kissed; all teeth and tongue and wet and warmth and Christ but how can a kiss be so intimate. Matt is fighting to breathe and Mello is curling his knuckles in Matt's back pocket. His lips are damp at Matt's ear, his tongue traces lines against it, hot puffs of air and longing. "There's something you can know, though," Mello whispers, hot puffs of air and longing, voice shaking as his hands ride back up Matt's body, pushing up Matt's shirt, scraping down again, fingers deft and rough all at once as they tug at Matt's belt buckle and shove at his jeans. "My name, my name's Mihael Keehl."

And Matt lets out a half-lost moan, a moan that has nothing to do with the fact that Mello has just spun them around and pushed Matt's back against the wall so hard that he sees stars. Matt clings to Mello's shoulders, as the blond takes hold of his dick, as the blond's fingers re-find their old familiar ways against Matt's body, as the blond fingers the differences that time has wrought, then slides down to kneel before him and take him into his mouth. Matt moans again, head back, hair catching at cuttings, tearing them. _Mihael, Mihael, Mihael Keehl._

"Mail," Matt answers; Mello killing him with his tongue, Mello's hand gripping so hard at Matt's hip that Matt thinks there will be bruises already. "Mail Jeevas, I'm Mail Jeevas."

If somebody had ever told him that coming with the sound of his own name on his lips would be such a rush, he'd never have believed them but it is, oh God, but it is.


	8. Chapter 8

And now they're grown-ups, and things have changed, but nothing is actually different. When they sit together on the mattress – Matt red-faced and half undressed; Mello still with his feathery coat on, and his lips shiny – their bodies fit against each other just as well as they always had. Matt takes Mello's coat off, and trails his fingers along the bare strip of Mello's stomach.

When Matt manages to blush a little more, and answer Mello's belated question honestly – _yeah I'm clean, there was only ever you_ – Mello sucks at his bottom lip for a moment, paused in the act of shrugging his vest off, then finally admits the same.

"Fuck," says Matt. Because it's the only word he can find right now. Because the victory swirling in his guts might get him punched, if he confesses it aloud. Because Mello just had his mouth on Matt's dick, and words can't express what it means to know that that mouth has only ever been there and there alone.

Because.

"Fuck," says Mello right back at him, sombrely, then falls apart into sudden laughter; falls back onto Matt's mattress, with his chest naked and breathing, and his hair tossed every which way, like the very first time they were together like this, all those years ago, on an April afternoon. Mello laughs until he descends into giggles – his knees up, his face bright – then hiccups in Matt's direction and puts his arm around Matt's neck, pulling him down to kiss him slowly. "Why are you still wearing your shirt?" he asks, amused, hands lazy on Matt's skin.

Matt grins into Mello's kiss. "I think the better question is, why are you still wearing your pants?"

And it's funny, because they've never done it like _this_ before, not all that time ago, not ever, and Matt's hands are trembling as he unlaces Mello's pants, and he can't help but think he's going to screw it up, pun not entirely intended; can't help but think he's going to do something wrong, but, somehow, it doesn't seem to matter. Because Mello is laughing, as he wriggles free from his pants, and Mello is smiling, as he pulls Matt down against him on the mattress. Matt doesn't even have time to confess that he isn't entirely sure what he's doing, before Mello puts his finger over Matt's mouth and murmur-hums something about Matt being a genius, and _surely you're clever enough to work it out; also, by the way, there's lube in my coat pocket._

Mello touches the crucifix, which is hanging at Matt's chest, with his mouth. He kisses Matt's skin around it; consumes Matt's insides with those blue eyes of his. He wraps his legs around Matt and pulls him closer. Their fingers/mouths/everything work together, as if this were the sole purpose Mello's God had made them for.

And Mello is so, so beautiful, when Matt finally gets it right.

**►**

Somehow, Mello just doesn't leave. Oh, physically he does; he comes and he goes, because he has his games to play and his places to be – but it's as though Matt's one stupid room has become his place to touch base.

Matt asks about everything, though part of him doesn't even want to know, because the rest of him needs to. He helps whenever he can, fact-checking, fact-proofing, creeping around the mental corners in Mello's mind. The more Matt does, the more they talk, the more the full extent of Mello's plans unroll before him. Mello hasn't changed one bit, but he's changed completely. He's driven and he's crazy; he's cool and he's calm.

He's simply more _Mello_ than ought to be allowed.

Matt's life condenses down until there's nothing but caffeine and cigarettes and loving-Mello and beating-Near. His nights blur into the gleam of computer screens. Numbers, names, names, numbers. Awake and asleep sound like synonyms. He doesn't approve of Ross, hell, he doesn't approve of any of the men Mello works with. Mello tells him to keep away from them, tells him that he doesn't want Matt getting involved. Matt finds it stupid, since he's involved anyway, but Mello plays his cards close to his chest even now. He calls Matt his Ace of Spades. Matt wants to hit him in the face, because he knows, he knows that all it really means is that Mello, who holds the whole world in his hands, just doesn't want that world to know that there's something he gives a shit about.

Or maybe he doesn't. Maybe he's been eating, drinking, breathing Kira for too long. Maybe, after all this time of playing badass, it's what he's really become.

Sometimes, just sometimes, Matt thinks that the only time Mello is even truly aware of him as _Matt_, rather than just as a cog in his vendetta, is when Matt has one of his hands on the headboard of the bed and is fucking Mello into the mattress, driving Mello so hard and so deep, pushing him off the edge, fucking him down to earth just for the purpose of fucking him back into oblivion again; the tumble of sheets, the grunt of breath; it's not – it's only – it's but a fraction of what Matt actually wants.

People think Matt is harmless. They don't notice him. They smile, and nod, and forget him three seconds later. Only now is Matt realizing that they're wrong, that he's been wrong. That he's just as insane as Mello is, only that his insanity is different; only that he wants something different, something a thousand times more selfish.

Matt hadn't known that love could feel so vampiric.

Matt learns to smile when he doesn't mean it, to stare at the world serenely through his goggles and his haze of nicotine. Matt learns to think, eat, sleep, breathe Kira just like Mello does. He counts Mello's breathing when he stays for the night, hair spread against the pillow; deep in his entrails Matt feels it, knows it: it's the only way.

**►**

It's the only way, but it isn't enough.

Matt isn't there, when the building goes up, but he sees it from the gas station where he's been waiting, at Mello's order, _just in case_. The girl behind the counter – slight film of dust on the back of her hands as she does the books, scratch-scratch of her pen intervened by the comments she tosses at him now and then, where he stands, leaning by the door – says something about phoning 9-1-1, but Matt is already outside the office by then, already inside Mello's car. Matt swears the whole way, driving with clammy palms clenched tight, and white knuckles; cursing Kira, cursing the Mafia, cursing Mello and his fucking plans and, even worse, cursing the fucking suspicion that Mello had known exactly what might happen – and had kept Matt and his precious car away for this very reason.

Matt's never seen anything like it. The stink of burnt plastic, burnt timber, asbestos dust and charred pig-iron; everything shattered and melted and moulded and twisted beyond recognition. There are people amongst it. Not the Japanese task force, because they've already gone, but people Matt knows by sight; people Matt can now barely recognize. Fear tears at his insides, but he's cold now, cold and calm, cold and calm as if it were his own death he were going to, not Mello's; Matt doesn't think, he can't afford to. He knows he's going to find Mello alive. He knows he's going to find Mello dead. Moments like this the universe is all things at once, all things combined and beaten with the spoon of fate, all things mixed and muddled and terrifying and, even if the Cheshire cat were to appear, over there, perhaps, grinning on that slip of iron which once must have held the traitorous roof up, it wouldn't add to the nightmare, to the dis-reality.

Mello is on the ground, holding the hand of a man almost covered in rubble. There are tears and blood and skin and filth all over Mello face, or all over what's left of it. Matt throws up in the mess, the burger he'd eaten half an hour ago revolting against his throat and his stomach, spattering his boots with ash and vomit. His hand tastes of iron when he wipes his mouth with it, hurries, hurries now, squats at Mello's side and speaks his name, over and over and over and over again, a mantra, a prayer, a beggar's psalm on a street corner, _please please please please please please please_. There's a pulse, and the motion of eyeballs behind eyelids, and Matt retches again with the sheer relief.

Alive.

He's already gathered Mello up, and begun to leave, when it occurs to him to check the pulse of the dark hand Mello had been clinging to so tightly. Matt doesn't want to go back to do it, but he knows Mello will ask once he's better, _must get better_.

He checks, but it's cold and silent.

Mello weighs too much, as Matt carries him back to the car. Matt stumbles and trips on stone and wire and, once, somebody's leg, fractured bone white in the mocking daylight.

Mello can't move, can't open his eyes, can't barely breathe; he still parts his lips, though, when Matt lays him out on the bench-seat of the car, and mumbles, "No blood on the upholstery."

**►**

Everything changes. The trip across the country is like a journey in a bottle, the radio never turning away from the news, Mello listening, with his one good eye staring out at the countryside as it passes. The hotels are cheap and they only stop when they have to. Matt simply drives, and drives, and drives, for as long and as well as he can, only pulling over to rest when the seconds, with his eyes closed, turns into moments; no point driving them into a fourteen-wheeler.

It's a journey in a bottle, yes. It's changing bandages. It's baths with a plastic bucket in motel showers, lukewarm water, and the scent of baby soap. It's Mello in loose track-pants and a flannelette shirt. It's blisters that can't be popped, nerves that are numb, and nerves that would be better if they were. It's skin, fragile and returning in sickening shades of brown and purple. It's Matt with his eyes fixed on the highway before them because he can't cope; it's Matt with his eyes fixed on the sky because he doesn't want to think about it. It's Mello, finally falling asleep as the sun rises before them, milky glow across the tarmac, using Matt's coat as a pillow against the window. It's silence, until even the news on the radio peters out into nothingness.

The night they enter New Jersey, though, Mello leans forwards suddenly, pushes at the old cassette deck, and lets The Cure tell them all about _you, soft and only, you, lost and lonely._

"You know," the blond says, as he rummages around in the glove-box for a half-empty pack of Maltesers, "we had it all wrong, Near and I. Somehow, I don't know... the harder we tried to be him, the further away we ended up. It's like chasing a mirage."

Matt knows Mello's speaking about L. Matt shifts into a higher gear, and glances sideways at his friend, who winds down the window a little, and passes him a cigarette. "How's it going?" Matt asks, though he isn't even sure what it is, exactly, that he's enquiring about.

"I think I've figured it out now," Mello answers, and counts out Maltesers onto his healing palm, prodding gently at the skin beneath them. "It wasn't that I had it wrong, more that I had it a little crooked. Near has never wanted more than to succeed L, and that's why he is where he is. As for myself..."

Matt returns his attention to the slip of world being continually re-born in the headlights' glow. "You wanted to beat L."

Mello gives Matt a look, pops Maltesers in his mouth like a hamster, and shifts his seat backwards a notch or two. "Don't be going all past tense on me now, Matty-boy. We're not dead yet."

When Matt glances back at him, Mello is smiling the first smile that that altered face of his has ever attempted. It isn't his old smile, no, but sometimes, just sometimes, new isn't necessarily a bad thing.


	9. Chapter 9

New York isn't Los Angeles, and that's a fact. Freelancing isn't like working for the Mafia, either, and it's a strange game they're playing here, the two of them; with Near, and against him. The money's almost gone. Mello calls in favours with people-who-know-people. Kira is a bastard, and Matt is beginning to take it personally.

Mello and Near toy with each other, on the telephone, until Matt's skin itches.

And then there's Halle.

**►**

Matt's never been with a woman, of course. He's never been with anyone apart from Mello, so it's stating the obvious but, still. It's not for lack of offers, from Linda onwards (blonde hair in the tapered sunlight, eyes dark from the lack of sleep that had haunted them all, after L's death). But he's never been with a woman. And Halle; Halle is a woman unlike any he's ever met.

It's actually Mello, Matt knows, whom she wants to fuck, but Mello ignores her in that way he does; leaves her hanging, with just enough tease in his face to have her coming back despite it. She's older than them, but it doesn't seem to bother her. Mello leers and says that it's Near she really wants, and Matt splutters into his beer at the thought. They've been in contact for a while now, the three of them; since before the boys came to this side of the country, actually. Halle doesn't say a word when she first sees Mello's scarred face, and Matt likes her the better, for that one small fact, than for anything else she's ever done. She takes Mello to Near, though, which cancels out the benefits she'd earnt herself. In Matt's eyes, anyway.

They're sitting in some dump of a motel, beside a too-loud road, when she turns up with a bottle of vodka and a pack of cigarettes. The cigarettes are for Matt, though she takes one for herself before she hands them over. Mello offers her a light, and she sits herself down at their table, her long legs enticing their eyes up to the shadows of her skirt. She studies Matt through the haze of her smoke, and it's the first time he can remember her actually looking at him properly. Her eyes are piercing, as she gazes from his goggles to his boots and back up again.

"So this is how it is, then," she says.

Mello smiles at her sideways, his thumb flicking lazy flames from the lighter, then grins at Matt; the kind of grin that is probably illegal in countries where they don't believe in public lewdness. Halle uncrosses her legs, then crosses them again, and gazes knowingly at the ceiling.

The bottle of vodka doesn't take very long to be opened, and Halle's bare toes – her shoes dropped to the floor – take even less time to find their way into Matt's lap. Matt twists at the contact, stomach knotting, and stares at Mello rather than at the woman. It takes him a second to realise what he's done, and he checks her face for offence taken, but Halle is smiling; smiling the smile of someone who knows what she wants and, more importantly, knows perfectly well that she cannot have it. "I can see why they're both after you," she says.

Matt raises his eyebrows at her.

Mello simply sprawls back, elbows against his chair. His gaze is curious and indolent, and he purrs, "You don't need my permission, you know."

Matt does need it, of course, and so does she, and the ex-mafioso knows it full well, but his statement is permission in itself. There's a politics here, buzzing away beneath the pulse of physical tension, and a part of Matt's vodka-washed brain says that he hasn't fully comprehended it yet. Halle hip-swings her way around the table and slides herself onto Matt's lap. Mello shifts imperceptibly in his chair; Matt can hear him move, Matt can feel Mello's eyes watching everything, even as Matt balances his cigarette on the edge of a bowl, and Halle undoes Matt's belt, no-nonsense, leaning her face in towards his, even as she unbuckles and unzippers.

"No kissing," says Mello, suddenly cool.

Halle smiles, dark and darker, shifts her shoulders to show her indifference, and places her mouth at Matt's collarbone instead, pressing her teeth against him – hard, but not hard enough to leave a mark. Her hands are cool against Matt's skin as she frees him from his boxers. His dick presses up against her lap as she strokes it. "Have you ever," she says, curious, her full attention on him now and her eyes ignoring Mello in a way that all three of them know is obviously calculated to gain Mello's fixed notice, "been inside...?" Then adds, with an amused little laugh, "Inside a woman?"

Matt could answer whatever he fancies, and he doubts she'd be able to call him on it, but better to be honest and clumsy with reason, he rationalizes, than dishonest and judged a lousy lay. Besides, she's only Halle. His hands are on her now, though, not that he can remember having put them there; running up her sides and down her sides, catching his fingers as best he can beneath her bra, back around to work the clasp with clever hands, then forwards once more. Her breasts are strange and heavy and almost fluid-feeling in his hands. He tweaks at her nipple as if it were Mello's, and her breath catches behind her teeth.

"No," he says, and twists it again.

Halle nods. Her hands are cool on his dick, slow and steady; she's done this before; how many times, he wonders, with whom. With whom would she rather be doing it this time, he asks himself. With Mello, watching them with hooded eyes, from the other side of the table? Mello's crude innuendos about the white-haired kid rise up in Matt's mind. Still, Halle looks pleased as she touches Matt, as she pulls a condom from her blouse pocket and rolls it over him. She shifts, dragging her skirt over her hips and bunching it at her waist. She's not wearing any underwear – does she always do that or can she read them that well – and the soft-rough of her pubic hair presses against him and makes him twitch. Her right hand is tight on Matt's shoulder, and her left hand guides him inside of her as she rises up to take him in; her body moves closer as she does so, her breasts warm and soft against his chest. Matt bites his lip at the sensation of her; she's hot like Mello but so fucking moist, sucking at him as she sinks down the length of him. Both her hands are on his shoulders now and she uses them for leverage, angling herself as she moves, as though she's pulling him against some place within her. Matt remembers vague notions about g-spots, stumbled upon when he'd first researched the prostate; Halle mumbles against him. She takes his hand, places it between her legs, says, _move like this, move like that, God please_, and Matt finds her irritating, except that Matt also finds her bloody good around him and, over her shoulder, he can see Mello watching, watching, watching; Mello's eyes sharp on everything and Mello's arm moving steadily, doing something between his legs beneath the table. Matt bucks into Halle hard at the sight, makes her moan, and suddenly Matt doesn't care any more what the underlying politics of this is; doesn't care any more, which of them it is that she'd rather be screwing – him or Mello or even the damn albino child – because suddenly he knows that Mello's name hangs upon this. If Matt is Mello's fuck, then Matt has to be fucking good at it.

Matt shifts, takes her hips in his hands, and pushes himself up until Halle is seated on the table. Her eyes go a little wide at her sudden loss of control, and Matt undoes her shirt and trails his mouth against her breasts, touches at her nipples, teasing, sucking, beginning to learn her tells, the way she breathes in rather than gasping out, how she pushes her back on the table, a glass rolling to the carpet, vodka splashing. She might be a woman, but Matt finds what makes her moan just like he'd found what makes Mello moan, and maybe the feel is different, and maybe the angle is different, but soon she has her legs clenched around him and he can feel it in her knees against him, as he pushes her closer to the edge with every thrust. She lets out a hoarse groan and tightens around him, shaking; Mello stands up and draws Matt into a messy, wet kiss. Mello's hand on Matt's face tastes of orgasm, and Matt comes at the stroke of Mello's tongue in his mouth.

Halle doesn't speak, as she smokes a cigarette, sitting naked on the table with her feet on Matt's chair. When she's finished, though, she considers the butt for a contemplative moment, takes another shot of vodka, smiles slowly, and tells them everything she knows.

**►**

New York isn't Los Angeles, but time passes at the same rate in the one place as it had in the other. The motel begins to feel like home, Matt plays the role of a spy after all, and Mello calls in more favours from people-who-know-people but, ultimately, they're on their own now. The other people don't matter.

Japan is Japan. The world is condensing into L's heirs and Kira, and Matt doesn't even try to argue, when Mello hands him the keys to his Camaro, touches the crucifix beneath Matt's shirt, and says _this is it now; it's been fun, hasn't it, amongst the crap, don't you think, Matt?_ Matt just says Mello's name, Mello's real name, and maybe that's enough.

**►**

Apparently it's Halle who saves him, in the end; a swift call at the right moment to the right person, guns halted, and Matt trussed up in a cell like a bird waiting to be plucked, with no idea what's happening in the outside world and no idea if he's going to want to be alive in it by the time the day is over. She comes to bail him out, eyes dark and no make-up on her face, and doesn't take no for answer, just drives him to her boss in a haze of fatigue and cigarette smoke.

Near is sitting in the corner of a lounge-chair and has the eyes of an eighty-year-old. Matt can't work out what to say to him, so he says nothing at all.

Apparently it's Mello who has saved the day, though, so Matt figures that they're finally even, anyway. Not that he even really cares anymore, to be honest.

Near gives him this look, when Mello finally walks into the room, as though there's something he's been meaning to say for the last ten years or so. And, for a second, Matt thinks he's really going to – but then Mello has his arms around Matt and everything else vanishes.

"We did it," says Mello, his mouth on Matt's mouth, on Matt's face, on Matt's neck; his hands gripping so tightly that Matt aches and stings where the guards had beaten him.

Matt winces and grins, because Mello is right. They've done it. "You did it," he answers, bubbles of relief in his throat and catching at his vowels.

"What next?" Mello asks. His clothes are singed, and he smells of death and petrol, but it doesn't matter.

Halle hands the blond some chocolate, and he gives her a cheerful thumbs up.

Matt laughs. "Anything."

"Anything?" Mello repeats, sucking on the milky gift. "Anything." And this time it's as though he's marvelling at it, not questioning it. Then he leers, exhausted but delighted, and makes a very descriptive promise about exactly what they're going to be doing the moment Matt's ribs have healed enough.

"Matt..." begins Near, and they both look at him, then; questioning, curious, and less aversion on Mello's face than Matt can remember having seen in a long time. "Matt," Near says again, then shrugs to himself, and sits there, in his toys and his silence, and with Halle kneeling beside him without him even noticing her. Whatever Near had wanted to say, he doesn't. Instead, he lets them limp out the front door and out into the Japanese night.

He's still L, Matt considers with a whisper of pity; he must have more important things to do.


	10. Chapter 10

"Anything at all," says Mello, for the umpteenth time. He's sitting in the middle of the motel bed, wearing nothing but a towel; the bedspread is rolled down and the sheets are a strange sea-green. He wraps his arms around himself, all scars and elbows and jutting ribs; wraps his arms around himself, and his eyes glee, as though he's a little kid again and can't quite contain his joy. Matt laughs into the shower-steamed bathroom mirror, and rinses the toothpaste from his mouth. It's as though it's suddenly hit them that they're only young still. That it doesn't matter what the world has thrown at them, they're only young still.

Matt keeps waiting for the bubble to burst, to dint, to pop into effervescent nothingness, but it hasn't. It hasn't. They're back in America, they're in the middle of nowhere, and it hasn't. They have passports in their pockets, money in their wallets, and a job lined up in Mexico. Mello wants to travel south, far south, wants to brush up on his Spanish, and maybe catch up with some old contacts on the way. Matt doesn't really care, he just wants Mello to keep looking like he's looking right now; smiling at him in the reflection of a mirror with that look in his eyes.

And, preferably, to stop trying to get himself burnt to death, of course.

Outside the window, the motel's office sign is winking at them, light glinting off the lines of Matt's bike, which is parked in front of the low verandah. Mello had thrown a tantrum when he'd realized that Near hadn't managed to get him his Camaro back, from where ever it was that it had ended up, but the bike is easier to move around the place anyways, and it's not like they own much at the moment. Matt just shrugs, whenever Mello threatens to buy a car; frankly he likes the feel of the blond behind him, the press of Mello's thighs against him as they purr down the highway.

Mello's hair is wet against Matt's skin, when Matt sits down on the bed with him. He smells faintly of soap and shaving foam. Mello runs his hands along Matt's chest, counting the tiny scars that Japan has left upon him. There's an opened bottle of beer on the beside table, just emptied enough for Mello to kiss at Matt's collarbone and whisper nonsense against his jaw. Mello's hair is cool and damp, leaving trails on Matt's shoulder. Matt strokes Mello's back absently, pulls him around until he's almost sitting in Matt's lap, and circles his thumb around Mello's bellybutton.

"It wouldn't kill you to say it, you know, Mels," Matt murmurs. He'd reach for the bottle, but he doesn't think beer would go so well with toothpaste.

Mello grins against Matt's chest. "It might," he teases. "And you shouldn't need me to state the blindingly obvious."

Matt holds Mello's wrists loosely with one hand above his head, and says hummingly, "Oh, really? Well, you know, I love you too, dumbarse."

Mello grins, all bared teeth and rising knees, and crows victoriously. "That's more like it."

**►**

The detective business isn't exactly jonesing for new competition but, the thing is, Near had conceded more than Matt had imagined. It's the detective Deneuve who crosses the Mexican border, and he does so – oh the irony – with the blessing of the officials on both sides. Matt works his way through half a pack of cigarettes just to stop himself from laughing at the sight of FBI agents shaking his boyfriend's hand.

The ex-Mafioso Mihael Keehl, and his unidentified accomplice from Japan are, after all, officially dead. Burnt to death and shot in the head, respectively, and, if nobody can find the autopsy reports, or their photographs, that's to be expected. The Kira case was, after all, a bit of a mess. The conspiracy buffs are already whispering things about government set-ups and organized assassinations. And L, well, he's already begun to merge so far into the shadows that there are those who say he doesn't exist at all.

Though, that's probably because they can't see the postcards he sends, postcards that never seem to say much of anything at all, but which always appear, kind of creepily, at motels just in time for Mello and Matt to pick them up. Matt is still pretty sure that the postmarks are all lying, but it's interesting to note the slight change in the tone of the kid's handwriting the night they arrive in Cuauhtémoc, and how he's signed for an H. as well as an N.

Mello finds it outrageously amusing, of course, but still slides it into the back of one of the notebooks he's begun to carry around with him, before sitting himself down and opening it to a clean page. The hotel is dingy and the lights keep flickering, but Mello sits beneath its fluttering glow with the moths and a bowl of chocolate flavoured cereal, and writes, in all honesty,

> _...I am the old world's runner-up, the best dresser that died like a dog, Mihael Keehl. I once called myself Mello and was addressed by that name, but that was a long time ago._

  
"Not so long ago," says Matt, rummaging in his pocket for his last pack of cigarettes, his gaze heavy for the first time since the whole business had come to an end. He puts his finger at the nape of Mello's neck and just rests it there. "And what am I to call you now?"

Mello keeps writing, four more words, draws a line across half the page, then puts his pen down and turns on the half-broken desk chair. He pulls Matt into his lap, despite the warning creak the furniture gives up, and whispers, "Whatever you want, Mail. Whatever you want."


	11. prologue/epilogue

11:42 PM and rain falls hard on Buenos Aires, but the inclement weather banging on their door is being ignored, and the water dripping from the kitchen ceiling falls, with unattended splashes, into an old ice-cream container with a steady rhythm.

"I did go out and buy you your ridiculous chocolate, you know, just like you asked me to," Matt says, with a grunt and a grin. Mello is straddling his lap, wet towel draped around his now naked neck. Mello's hands are flat and firm against Matt's shoulders. Matt's wearing nothing but socks. He likes the feel of the muscles in Mello's lower back, moving beneath his palms. He likes the shift of Mello's thighs against him. He likes the feel of himself inside Mello, of Mello surrounding him. He noses Mello's damp hair away from his neck, to nip at the pale skin there. "Bloody addict."

"H'h," responds the blond in a distracted voice. Mello's just finding his rhythm and he's making Matt's breath catch, now, as he grips a little tighter, takes him a little deeper, and begins to really move, move-dance-fly-create, hips and thighs singing with a devastatingly slow beat. Then there's his tongue licking at the corner of his mouth, a darting tip of wetness, and his arms pushing for better leverage against Matt's sunburnt skin, and he enlarges upon his mutter with a, "What? You said no, on the phone." He tips his face downwards towards Matt as he speaks, slow, slow, slow to the backdrop of the rush of storm beyond their thin walls, unsettling Matt's nerves in all the right places.

Matt takes the opportunity to suck at Mello's lip. He chuckles, low, tone like a shade of purple velvet, even as the pleasure trawls at his insides, building with every shift and sway. "Dickhead," he breathes against Mello's chin. "Y'know I never mean it." He slides one hand between their bodies, wraps it around Mello's dick and begins to stroke, slow, slow harmony to the music Mello's playing with his body.

The blond groans, lets his head tip right forwards, shoulders bunched with motion, digs his nails deeper into Matt's skin, and ups the tempo.

**►**

Hour unknown, because the storm has shorted out the clock on the microwave, and Matt lies with his with his spine curled against the scruffy blankets on the sofa. Mello's body is tucked in warmly against his, their legs a comfortable muddle. The wet towels lie forgotten on the floor. Matt's shirt covers Mello's back, tossed crookedly over skin and scars to stop him from getting cool, though Matt thinks his hands, stroking the blond's arse, are probably having more effect.

Mello breathes, and smiles, and brushes Matt's hair from his face. He traces his finger over Matt's crucifix, and the nicotine patch on his arm to the left of it. He whispers, "You know, I'm not sure where you get off, calling me an addict, Mail Jeevas. You're as big an addict as me."

Matt opens his eyes, tightening his hold on Mello's body, and studies him for a while. Then he closes his eyes again, and drags the blond in even closer, anchoring himself against Mello's hip bones.

And if Matt says anything at all – if Matt says anything at all, which might sound an awful lot like, _oh, but I've always known it_ – Mello lets him pretend that he hasn't, just drags the blankets down, from the top of the couch, to cover the both of them; curls closer, and dozes off to the sound of Matt's heart beating.

Addictions are what it's always been about, after all.

 

**►**

_We'll cut our bodies free from the tethers of this scene,  
Start a brand new colony,  
Where everything will change,  
We'll give ourselves new names (identities erased)  
The sun will heat the grounds  
Under our bare feet in this brand new colony  
Everything will change._

– The Postal Service, 'Brand New Colony'.


End file.
